In-Car Media Systems : Touchscreen or Controller Knob ?

[Levi68]

Now we can mainly find two types of in-car media systems :
Touchscreen : Jaguar, Porsche, Bentely,...
Controller Knob : BMW, Audi, Mercedes, Lexus, McLaren,...

Today almost all of our multimedia devices have touchscreens. This is not really the case of in-car media systems. Which do you prefer and why ?

 

[le_rosey]

I can speak only from my personal experience, but for me it is a no brainer.

Controller knob.
Why?
After very little practice it becomes intuitive and does not require attention while driving. My personal favorite is BMW's iDrive controller as the buttons around it have different curves, hence eyesight is not required. The previous 8-direction knob is much less useful but I still prefer it over touch screen.

Additionally touchscreens also have subtle differences that can make them useless. On my sister's Range Rover the touchscreen is not as responsive as you might want it to be.

Lastly, while actually driving there is only a limited number of car functions I use. Usually it is limited to radio/iPod.

The only area where touchscreens use to have an edge was text input. But Audi has corrected that with MMI touchpad with handwriting recognition.

 

[Kowalski]

Controller. Touchscreen is annoyingly unresponsive.